The Romans celebrated the Secular Games based upon a 110 year cycle called the saeculum, which was calibrated to be long enough so that no person would ever live to see 2 such games. The Old Testament also states that Moses's 120 years was the maximum allowed for man after the age of semi-mythical heroes such as Methuselah & Noah.

It is humbling to realize that despite our ability to put a man on the moon or split the atom, the maximum extent of human life has not budged at all. Life expectancy has of course dramatically increased thanks to improvements in child mortality, hygiene and disease control, however we are not living much longer than the Romans, who had typical Iron Age technology and somewhat atypically good public infrastructure (baths, sewers, and aqueducts). Look at the longevity of the first 15 or so Roman emperors, before disease started to wrack the Roman world. Those who died of natural causes regularly lived into their upper 70's, and I somehow doubt they'd greatly envy our ability to eke out a couple extra Alzheimer-dazed years at incredible cost.

The Baby Boomers [and even some of the pre-Boomers - folks born in the 1930s and early 1940s] are getting so obese that there's no way in Hades they'll make it to 100.

I look at some of these fat kids nowadays - from elementary school on - and wonder whether they'll even make it to 50. [The girls at the local college are so fat that they're not even sexual objects anymore - they're just cows.]

Greg Clark notes there an odd number of dead people whose ages was listed in the triple digits back in ancient times, because most people so innummerate they had no idea what their ages were. One rich Roman landowner listed his age jumping up 5 years within the space of a single year, then back down again the next year.

No, more like the average woman in one of the world's most top-shelf, diet -conscious countries (i.e. Japan). The current American male life expectancy is only around 77 (though of course this is depressed somewhat on account of NAM's). The idea that elites are now regularly living to the century mark is absurd, though.

Here are some examples from classical history which prove my point:

Euripides: 74 Sophocles: 90Socrates*: 71Plato: 82Archimedes*: 75

I realize there is a bit of selection bias built in, as in order to have become famous enough to go down in history an ancient "worthy" would have had to live to at least 40 in order to produce those accomplishments for which they became famous. Which is why, now that I think about it, using the list of Roman Emperors is pretty good. Roman Emperors are known to us simply for the office they held, and there is no question of their selection based on potential longevity. So even though they were locked into a stressful, for-life job (basically world CEO) most lived to enviably ripe old ages:

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